Newsweek: The Canary In The Liberal Coal Mine

In the early days of coal mining, there were no ventilation systems. Methane and carbon gas could easily gather in dangerous amounts and explode, killing the miners. So the time-tested way to provide advance warning of danger was to bring in a caged canary. Canaries, like miners, not doing well breathing methane and carbon gas either. When the canary — whose primary occupation was singing — stopped singing, there was only one reason.

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The little fellow, clueless as to what was really going on around him, would brightly warble away until — baffled, stunned, wobbling — he began to notice that not only was he increasingly unable to sing, the breathing thing wasn’t going so well either. In short order, Tweetie was a goner, a sure signal to the miners to run for their lives because the mine was about to explode.

Over at Newsweek, the liberal newsweekly magazine owned by the Washington Post Co., the warbling of the liberal line is getting difficult. In fact, the gasping for financial breath has become so serious, the Post has decided to put the staggering magazine up for sale.

On a human level, one can take no delight here. The men and women who produce this magazine, in existence since 1933, doubtless have families to feed, kids to educate, lives to live. We wish them well.

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But the failure of Newsweek is a significant moment in American culture that should not go unnoticed. It is the journalistic equivalent of the canary, a sign that that the coal mine that is liberal beliefs, assumptions, and ways of looking at the world is about to explode. With real life consequences for those who have endlessly mined this seam of American politics to a steadily shrinking customer base.